My Italian is better than your English. For your information I have a laurea in theoretical physics and am the author of a text covering developments in astronomy from 1875 to 1975, published in a Mondadori Biographical Dictionary, after being read and approved by astronomer Paolo Maffei. I edited also two of his books, "Al di la' della Luna" and "I mostri del cielo", both translated in English and published by MIT Press. I don't have the habit of insulting people and I shall not reply to your offenses.
Tullio

A senior astronomer has said that the hunt for alien life should take into account alien "sentient machines".

Seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has until now sought radio signals from worlds like Earth.

But Seti astronomer Seth Shostak argues that the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence (AI) would be short.

Writing in Acta Astronautica, he says that the odds favour detecting such alien AI rather than "biological" life.

Many involved in Seti have long argued that nature may have solved the problem of life using different designs or chemicals, suggesting extraterrestrials would not only not look like us, but that they would not at a biological level even work like us.

However, Seti searchers have mostly still worked under the assumption - as a starting point for a search of the entire cosmos - that ETs would be "alive" in the sense that we know.

That has led to a hunt for life that is bound to follow at least some rules of biochemistry, live for a finite period of time, procreate, and above all be subject to the processes of evolution.

But Dr Shostak makes the point that while evolution can take a large amount of time to develop beings capable of communicating beyond their own planet, technology would already be advancing fast enough to eclipse the species that wrought it.

"If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you," he told BBC News.

"But within a few hundred years of inventing radio - at least if we're any example - you invent thinking machines; we're probably going to do that in this century.

"So you've invented your successors and only for a few hundred years are you... a 'biological' intelligence."

From a probability point of view, if such thinking machines ever evolved, we would be more likely to spot signals from them than from the "biological" life that invented them.
'Moving target'

John Elliott, a Seti research veteran based at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, says that Dr Shostak is putting on a firmer footing a feeling that is not uncommon in the Seti community.

"But having now looked for signals for 50 years, Seti is going through a process of realising the way our technology is advancing is probably a good indicator of how other civilisations - if they're out there - would've progressed.

"Certainly what we're looking at out there is an evolutionary moving target."

Both Dr Shostak and Dr Elliott concede that finding and decoding any eventual message from such alien thinking machines may prove more difficult than in the "biological" case, but the idea does provide new directions to look.

Dr Shostak says that artificially intelligent alien life would be likely to migrate to places where both matter and energy - the only things he says would be of interest to the machines - would be in plentiful supply. That means the Seti hunt may need to focus its attentions near hot, young stars or even near the centres of galaxies.

"I think we could spend at least a few percent of our time... looking in the directions that are maybe not the most attractive in terms of biological intelligence but maybe where sentient machines are hanging out."

This is a compilation of most of the articles related to Seti published in the Science Daily for the last four years. There were more articles from 2004 - 2009 but I didn't include them as I thought they were probably old news to most members.

There is a line between each year with 2012 the most recent starting at the top and 2009 at the bottom.

2012

Planet Population Is Plentiful: Planets Around Stars Are the Rule Rather Than the Exception
ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2012)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120111133530.htm

There May Be Millions of Planets in Our Galaxy Orbiting Two Stars
ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2012)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120111133518.htm

There was a good article a few weeks ago in the Guardian UK that focused mainly on 'citizen science' and Galaxy Zoo/Zooniverse, but it mentioned SETI in passing and included a link to SETI@home, so perhaps it will bring in further recruits. It failed to note that SETI@home started long before the Zooniverse. The article url is still active, at:

Also, a few weeks earlier, the BBC covered the launch of the new SETI live website, part of the Zooniverse, in this article:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17199882

This article alerted me to the SETIlive website, and I've since joined. There are teething issues still, with frozen screens etc., but the user base is growing. Staring at 'noise' screens may not be for everyone.

Additionally, there was a great article in the Atlantic Online back in February, which I dont see mentioned here, so I will give the url. It includes an interview with Robert Gray, author of The Elusive Wow, and discusses the famous Wow! signal/anomaly. The url is at:

There was a good article a few weeks ago in the Guardian UK that focused mainly on 'citizen science' and Galaxy Zoo/Zooniverse, but it mentioned SETI in passing and included a link to SETI@home, so perhaps it will bring in further recruits. It failed to note that SETI@home started long before the Zooniverse. The article url is still active, at:

This article alerted me to the SETIlive website, and I've since joined. There are teething issues still, with frozen screens etc., but the user base is growing. Staring at 'noise' screens may not be for everyone.

Additionally, there was a great article in the Atlantic Online back in February, which I dont see mentioned here, so I will give the url. It includes an interview with Robert Gray, author of The Elusive Wow, and discusses the famous Wow! signal/anomaly. The url is at:

Ah, the seeming silence of the Universe. Just came across this article, which contains a video that presents an animated exploration of the famous and fascinating Fermi Paradox; it appeared a week ago in the Guardian UK; here is the link: